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You managed to fit one of these rack mount units inside your computer? How did you manage that? I'd love to see a picture.

No, only the clearly visible PCI-E card goes inside the computer. One needs computer with PCI-E slots for this.




What model/manufacturer are those specifically? Just curious since availability still seems to be ramping up.

Two are Supermicro based systems we are using for testing while deciding between building, HP, Dell, or BOXX. The other two are CPU drop-ins to existing BOXX E5 workstations.

We may get at least one Mac Pro depending on how it performs with Smoke relative to the previous tower.
 

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No, only the clearly visible PCI-E card goes inside the computer. One needs computer with PCI-E slots for this.

It's a DSP card though, and since you need the converters anyway you may as well rack up the DSP card.
 
You managed to fit one of these rack mount units inside your computer? How did you manage that? I'd love to see a picture.

Image

Or did you somehow hack it to run the PCIe card without an interface box connected? Must be hard to mix without being able to hear any audio though.



And now I can add I know an audio "professional" who is using an external audio interface but doesn't actually know what that is.



What model/manufacturer are those specifically? Just curious since availability still seems to be ramping up.

You're making yourself look incredibly uninformed (censored description there). You even make your point even more irrelevent with the image you shared because it has the internal PCIe card that connects to the external interfaces right next to them in the picture!

That's what Thunderbolt expansion systems are for with the new Mac Pro and this beast is a fine example:

echoexpress3_configavid.png
 
The point is that IP over Thunderbolt does not beat Ethernet.
PCIe over TB2 seems to be the main concern of a bottleneck. Three TB2 busses seems to be the answer.

Since the purpose of this device seems to be to shovel huge piles of cash to Intel, perhaps Intel should release their TB2 support chips NOW to OEMs so they can produce peripherals on the day of release or soon thereafter.

Rocketman :D
 
No, only the clearly visible PCI-E card goes inside the computer.

And the IO box goes outside the computer. So in fact you do have an external audio interface hooked up to your Mac Pro. As I said, I have yet to encounter anyone doing pro audio without an external box, and you're yet another one in that category.

Two are Supermicro based systems we are using for testing while deciding between building, HP, Dell, or BOXX. The other two are CPU drop-ins to existing BOXX E5 workstations.

Thanks for the info. Which E5 chips are they using? I'm curious what their pricing is as well.

it has the internal PCIe card that connects to the external interfaces right next to them in the picture!

Did you even read my post? That's exactly what I spelled out, that particular system needs the PCIe card and the external IO box. The whole point is that people are claiming with the old MP it didn't need an external audio box. With Pro Tools and many other pro audio solutions, there is an external audio box. Do they even make pro audio hardware that is only internal, at least for mac?

Mac-Pro_2013_Mac-Pro_2013.jpg


Here's the picture that started the whole discussion which implies that people are doing audio without a box on the current MP and only will start using one with the upcoming MP. Now can we all agree that anyone using Pro Tools already has at least one external box connected, like the picture on the right? And that nobody using Pro Tools hardware has no external boxes, like the picture on the left? If someone is actually doing pro audio without any external box, I'd love to hear what it is.
 
Thanks for the info. Which E5 chips are they using? I'm curious what their pricing is as well.

2 pair of E5-2690 v2
1 pair of E5-2687w v2
1 pair of E5-2697 v2

The 2690v2 is shaping up to be the best balance.
 
Did you even read my post? That's exactly what I spelled out, that particular system needs the PCIe card and the external IO box. The whole point is that people are claiming with the old MP it didn't need an external audio box. With Pro Tools and many other pro audio solutions, there is an external audio box. Do they even make pro audio hardware that is only internal, at least for mac?

Image

Here's the picture that started the whole discussion which implies that people are doing audio without a box on the current MP and only will start using one with the upcoming MP. Now can we all agree that anyone using Pro Tools already has at least one external box connected, like the picture on the right? And that nobody using Pro Tools hardware has no external boxes, like the picture on the left? If someone is actually doing pro audio without any external box, I'd love to hear what it is.

No, they're claiming you don't need an external "expansion box" to house PCIe cards and drives, that's a different point entirely which you're completely missing.
 
The point is that IP over Thunderbolt does not beat Ethernet.

It's a point that is not worth making though. a) What 100GbE adapters can you buy that have a Mac driver? b) The adapters I have found costs $10k per port, and that's on a 12 port $120k adapter. Clearly something that is aimed squarely at the HPC and large data center market.
 
No, they're claiming you don't need an external "expansion box" to house PCIe cards and drives

Who exactly is this "they"? A number of posts have specifically mentioned things like audio interfaces that are already external. Seems like a straw man argument, quote of someone actually claiming that?
 
Who exactly is this "they"? A number of posts have specifically mentioned things like audio interfaces that are already external. Seems like a straw man argument, quote of someone actually claiming that?

You replied to them, read them again!

Strawman? What's next Nazi comparisons? :rolleyes:
 
If you're sure that your important applications can use 10 cores, yes it looks good.

If they don't scale beyond 4 cores, then the 3.5GHz quad would be snappier and cheaper.

If your applications are friendly to OpenCL - you might want to put the money into the GPUs rather than the CPUs - and vice-versa.

Of course, the chances of Apple giving you a choice of 17 different CPUs are rather slim.

The sad fact is that I still have lots of single core apps, but there never seems to be that much difference between any of the higher clock speed CPUs. I'm using the 3.33 hex core now and frankly when I run my 2.8 it's hard to tell the difference.

My 3D apps scale pretty well, so 10 cores would probably be fine, although I doubt Apple has me in mind when they configure anything.

I suspect they'll give us 3 choices, 4 tops.
 
You replied to them, read them again!

I did, and there are plenty that talk about already needing external audio boxes and I didn't find any that said you don't need an external "expansion box" to house PCIe cards and drives.

Maybe I'm an idiot and just can't find those posts you're referring to. So quote them and prove me wrong.

And yes, when someone insists "They're all saying X" and then refuses to quote a post actually saying X, that's what a straw man argument is.

At least I guess we can all finally agree that guys doing pro audio already are using external boxes so it's not like that particular group is sitting there with Mac Pros with nothing attached.
 
I did, and there are plenty that talk about already needing external audio boxes and I didn't find any that said you don't need an external "expansion box" to house PCIe cards and drives.

Maybe I'm an idiot and just can't find those posts you're referring to. So quote them and prove me wrong.

And yes, when someone insists "They're all saying X" and then refuses to quote a post actually saying X, that's what a straw man argument is.

At least I guess we can all finally agree that guys doing pro audio already are using external boxes so it's not like that particular group is sitting there with Mac Pros with nothing attached.

I'm not even going acknowledge your arrogance with a response to that.

As far as your second (that has an actual) point, there's a lot of high end audio interfaces that are Firewire based that work with host-based DAWs like Logic X or Pro Tools (not the HD version with DSPs).
 
I'm not even going acknowledge your arrogance with a response to that.

Exactly the response I expected, you've refused to quote someone saying that and when you get called on it, you're too much in a huff to give a quote. Of course if you could actually prove your point, you would. Since you can't, you have no other option but theatrics.

As far as your second (that has an actual) point, there's a lot of high end audio interfaces that are Firewire based that work with host-based DAWs like Logic X or Pro Tools (not the HD version with DSPs).

Yep, as I've been saying all along, virtually all pro audio was done with external boxes on the previous MP, and the same will be true with the next MP.
 
Please do not take this as an insult, I'm just observing, but are you a youngster between age 12-15? I'm asking because if you don't know the answer to that question I'm wondering what type of computing do you do?

LOL I had a suspicion I should of went be bit heavier with the sarcasm. I'll try harder next time
 
Since a big portion of your message is "shut up". No. I will keep posting content people want to read, about Macs, and whether I sign it or not is a matter of my own habit and momentary interest. Get over it. But at least I will not tell you to shut up. It would land on deaf ears.

I never said anything close to shut up, you're welcome to post what you want, but I'm baffled why anyone would ever sign a post with their handle in a user forum in 2013.:confused:
 
I never said anything close to shut up,
portishead said:
I think we could all do without the . . .
:D
portishead said:
you're welcome to post what you want, but I'm baffled why anyone would ever sign a post with their handle in a user forum in 2013.:confused:
I don't know why you want to make this personal and stalk me, but I am clearly stuck in the 90's. Happy too. Try it.
 
Microsoft Research have already done that over Lightpeak.

Please re-read the Microsoft Research paper, you're a bit wrong.

Unless you believe that connecting a PCIe NIC to a T-Bolt port is "IP over T-Bolt".

And in any event, since 40 GbE and 100 GbE is on the market, why would bizarro networking over a 10/20 Gb link be interesting? Except to fans....
 
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Please re-read the Microsoft Research paper, you're a bit wrong.

Unless you believe that connecting a PCIe NIC to a T-Bolt port is "IP over T-Bolt".

How so? They needed to create a NIC because it's a prototype and not a standard part, a thunderbolt controller does what their card does, including switching. Thunderbolt already is a network, the topic is IP over that network. To support this someone needs to write a thunderbolt network driver.

And in any event, since 40 GbE and 100 GbE is on the market, why would bizarro networking over a 10/20 Gb link be interesting? Except to fans....

Price, availability. You would get up to 20Gb/s networking out of the box, useful to transfer files on a small office LAN or just between two computers. And perhaps for small cluster duties over nights and weekends.
 
How so? They needed to create a NIC because it's a prototype and not a standard part, a thunderbolt controller does what their card does, including switching. Thunderbolt already is a network, the topic is IP over that network. To support this someone needs to write a thunderbolt network driver.

Price, availability. You would get up to 20Gb/s networking out of the box, useful to transfer files on a small office LAN or just between two computers. And perhaps for small cluster duties over nights and weekends.

If you're putting a PCIe NIC on the T-Bolt cable, you're not running "IP over T-Bolt".

Apparently some people are ignorant about IP protocols, and the intelligence needed to implement them.

My 5 year old Dell laptop has a BroadComm Netextreme GbE NIC on the mobo. This *NIC* has a dual core 64-bit MIPS R4000 microprocessor to offload the IP and TCP/IP protocol handling.

You're not going to get "IP over T-Bolt" without something similar - so why bother?
 
If you're putting a PCIe NIC on the T-Bolt cable, you're not running "IP over T-Bolt".

Of course, and I have never suggested that.

Apparently some people are ignorant about IP protocols, and the intelligence needed to implement them.

Indeed,

My 5 year old Dell laptop has a BroadComm Netextreme GbE NIC on the mobo. This *NIC* has a dual core 64-bit MIPS R4000 microprocessor to offload the IP and TCP/IP protocol handling.

You're not going to get "IP over T-Bolt" without something similar - so why bother?

If you read the paper, you see that their driver does all of that, ie software.
 
Like others have mentioned, I'm also hoping to see an updated Cinema Display product line that goes up to 4k resolution.

I'm going to hazard a guess and say the new Mac Pro will come with updated keyboard and mouse, I really cant see Apple selling the current silver/white keyboard with the MP.

This little Mighty Mac will sit nicely on top of a rack full of peripherals.

Are the video cards able to be swapped out? They don't appear to be PCIe cards. Having non-upgradable video cards would be a deal breaker for many who want the latest and most power GPUs for realtime FX.
 
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